SERMON XXVI.

THE GLORY OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
kingdom of their Father.”

IT is plain that these words are spoken of the
end of the world, and of the condition of the
righteous in God’s eternal kingdom. The purpose for which Christ came into the world was, “to bring in everlasting righteousness.”
All other
gifts and distributions of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, are but parts of this one great and perfect gift. It was for righteousness
that the whole
creation groaned and travailed together: wrong,
and falsehood, and violence, and impurity, and
darkness, and the torment of an evil heart, in one
word, unrighteousness, was both the sin and the
misery of mankind.

So also, in one word, the redemption of man
through the blood-shedding of Christ is the restoration of righteousness to the world. Noah was 385
the “heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”122122Heb. xi. 7.
The prophecy of the Gospel was, that “righteousness” should “look down from heaven;”123123Ps.
lxxxv. 11. and
again we read, “Drop down, ye heavens, from
above, and let the skies pour down righteousness;
let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together:”124124Isaiah xlv. 8. “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in
mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time
to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you.”125125Hosea x. 12. And therefore, when the “Sun
of righteousness”126126Mal. iv. 2. arose upon the earth, “the
ministration of righteousness”1271272 Cor. iii. 9. was brought into
the world, “that as sin hath reigned unto death,
even so might grace reign, through righteousness,
unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”128128Rom. v. 21.
And to this end we have received the “gift of
righteousness,”129129Rom. v. 17. which though perfect in itself,
is not yet made perfect in us, but is ordered by
the laws and measures of growth, and slow advancement; and therefore the whole mystical body
of Christ, which is so made one with Him, that
He is made “righteousness” unto us, is still waiting “for the hope of righteousness by faith.”130130Gal. v. 5. All
the regenerate are brought, by the working of His 386grace, into a relation to the perfect righteousness
of His person and His kingdom; and they that
are of faith shall partake in fulness what they
now have only in pledge. “The path of the just,”
or “righteous,” “is as the shining light, which
shineth more and more unto the perfect day; “and “at His coming and His kingdom” they shall
be “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white,” which
is “the righteousness of saints.”131131Rev. xix. 8. Such is the
meaning of our Lord’s words: “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun.”
From which we may learn:—

In the first place, that righteousness is a gift
which lies hid in us here in this earthly life; and
that, partly because it is a thing in its very nature
spiritual and inward, dwelling in the soul of man;
and partly because it is concealed by the imperfections of our being, by the decay of our bodily
frame, and the like. In this life it is so disguised,
so shrouded in our mortality, and so mixed up
with the changes and conditions of this world,
that the gift of righteousness is rather an object
of faith than of sight. We do, indeed, at all times
see the tokens of its presence; but what we behold,
and all that is indicated by the tokens we see, is
but a very small measure of that abounding grace
of righteousness which, like leaven in the mass, is 387hid in the world, for the restoration of mankind to
eternal life. For instance, we are delivered from
the power of death, and yet we must die; we are
made righteous, and yet we are alloyed with imperfections. The very fact of death is full of mystery. We are delivered from
death by dying; and,
though redeemed from it, we must fall under its
power. It is upon us at all times; all pains, and
sicknesses, and gnawing diseases, and deadly humours which through life gather in us,—all these
are death. All our life long we are in death; in
very truth, we are dead while we live; for all the
sufferings of the flesh are the shadows and the
forerunners and the workings of death in us; all
the bodily ills which fasten and prey upon mankind
are laws of the kingdom of death. And so it has
pleased God to ordain that even the righteous shall
die; that they shall be bowed and bent with ills of
the flesh, scathed and withered up by the powers
of the visible world, by cold and heat, and pestilence, and famine, and the like; that their earthly
nature shall be as it were warred upon, and beat
down, and brought into bondage by the strife of
matter. The earthly bodies of the holiest are
oftentimes “marred more than any man” by sharp
pains, and lingering anguish, and fearful forms of
fleshly evil; or if not so afflicted, yet we see the
faculties of nature decay, the sight wax dim, and 388the ear heavy, and the whole man grow weak and
weary, and spent with bearing the burden and the
load of a sinking body. And not only so, but even
the powers which are most closely allied to the
soul, which seem to inhere in the spiritual life,
they too give way, or are hidden; as if they retired
from manifestation and outward exercise, all the
organs through which they were wont to act being
blunted, and withdrew themselves into the depth
of our secret immortality: “In the day when the
keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong
men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease
because they are few, and those that look out of
the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be
shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding
is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird,
and all the daughters of music shall be brought
low; also when they shall be afraid of that which
is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the
almond-tree shall nourish, and the grasshopper
shall be a burden, and desire shall fail:”132132Eccles. xii. 3-5. then it
comes to pass, that the wisest of men turns again
to the wandering of a child; the most piercing
reason is as dull as if it were worn away; the
memory is misleading and confused; and all the
intellectual powers seem to be suspended and concealed.

389

But there is a greater mystery still. The decay of the flesh, and of the intellectual powers,
which put themselves forth through the flesh and
hold converse with this visible world, is a wonderful token of the fall, and a mark of humiliation
left still upon the redeemed; yet all these powers
and energies are external to the spiritual life, and
abide rather at its circumference than in its centre; and therefore, though it must ever be an
awful sight to behold even the righteous wasting
away by natural decline, and, year by year, becoming dead, and bereft of the powers of our bodily
and intellectual nature, yet it is in harmony with
the laws which order all things. It is a sight full
of deep and sorrowful thoughts, to see a man once
endowed with strength, and wisdom, and knowledge, and skill, and power of speech, and with unbending firmness, whose whole
life seemed to be
taken up into one energy of righteousness, year by
year passing off, unknown to himself, into lower
and feebler movements, and at last so changed and
clouded as to outlive his very self. And yet there
are around us things which speak, as in a parable,
of such decays. All the changes of nature—the
falling of sapless branches, and the gathering clouds
which hide the light of heaven—are so many mute
witnesses, that there is none changeless and abiding 390but God alone; and that the powers of life are
secret, often hid, without manifestation or a visible
presence.

But there is a mystery of humiliation even
greater than this, into which, also, the righteous
are permitted to enter. It is most certain that
they partake, moreover, of what may be called the
spiritual decays of old age. Sometimes, indeed,
the righteous depart like Moses, the servant of the
Lord, who “was an hundred and twenty years old
when he died,” and yet “his eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated:” but if we look at Jacob, and
Eli, and David, and Solomon, and many more, and
at many also of whom we read in the history of the
Church, or whom we ourselves see around us, we
shall discern that the decays of nature are felt also
in the habits and powers of the spiritual life; and
the moral failings which beset old age gather even
about those in whom is the gift of righteousness.
We see them, for instance, more or less under what
may be called the powers of dissolution. Even the
best of men, when they grow old, become credulous,
and irresolute, and of a weak will, and feeble in
self-control, and are quickly kindled, and haunted
by false fears and fanciful suspicions, and break
out into little eccentricities, and are sensitive if
remarked upon, or resisted, or advised.

391

And these little mists rise up and draw a haze
over the brightness of the spirit. Without doubt,
the righteous, who have made provision by self-discipline, and subjugation of temper, in the time
of strength, have a great and visible advantage
over all others-, yet it is not to be denied that
even they, when they come under decay, enter into
the shadows of our human infirmity.

But I have thus far spoken only of the partial and casual obscurations which the righteous
suffer at certain seasons and in certain states of
life: it is also most evident, however, that all the
righteous are, here in this life, as it were, under a
cloud. It is true of every man living in the power
of his regeneration, that he is for the most part
hid from sight. The weakness of his nature, even
though regenerate, baffles and dims the light which
is struggling outward from within. This is the very
condition of his sanctification: for the thing which
by nature he could not have, is working mightily,
subduing all things to itself; “but we see not yet
all things put under” it. As is Christ’s kingdom in
the world, so is the beginning of righteousness in
each several man. It has a deep root, striking out
on every side, putting forth new energies, changing things inwardly into its own likeness, revealing
itself outwardly by signs, and tokens, and a visible
form, but is itself hidden and invisible. So far as 392the eye of the world reaches, the holy Catholic
Church is no more than any other visible polity,
and not the richest, nor strongest, nor, in an
earthly sense, the most politic or prosperous. On
the whole, though it is evidently something that
has its own character and its own meaning, and
is fulfilling some definite aim, whatsoever that aim
be—and the world little knows or cares—still it
has no overwhelming proofs of sanctity, no obtrusive tokens of a hidden life. Though it be both
holy and visible, yet there is an inwardness and a
retirement about it, even in its visibleness; and
what is this but to say, that it is perfection dwelling in an imperfect form; eternity in time; heaven
in earth; infinity in the finite; a shadow of its
mysterious Head, in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily?” And therefore the
Church has seemed, at times, to wane and to wax
dim, and, at times, to grow dark outwardly; at
the best it has exhibited to the world but a chequered light; rather a promise than a full orb of
brightness.

So has it ever been, and ever shall be, with
the righteous. They look like other men; they
have the same wants, the same toils, the same
gains and losses, the same sicknesses and decays,
the same besetting infirmities of a fallen nature;
though there be something in them which often 393makes itself felt from within, and seems to be at the point of
shewing itself openly to the world, yet it still lies under a veil. The light of
the righteous does indeed “shine before men,” but not in all its fulness: enough
to bespeak the gift that is in them, but not to unfold its breadth and glory.
Men can see that they are in some way higher than themselves; that “greater is
He that is in” them “than he that is in the world:” but they cannot put together
the characters that are impressed upon them, and read their meaning; just as men
can tell that a secret cipher is a written language, though they cannot unravel
what it says. Therefore the world, in all ages, has ever either blackened and
maligned the righteous, or, at least, has distorted and deformed their character
and actions. Nay, even more, the righteous themselves know but in part; they
are too weak of sight to behold all that God is doing within them; they know
that they have received a great gift from Him; that they have powers, and
capacities, and sympathies, and an energy derived from the Infinite and Eternal;
that wisdom, and love, and mercy, and purity, have no measure or limit, except the nature in which they dwell; as the powers
of seeing or of knowing are limited only by the
organisation of the body, and the conditions by
which we attain to knowledge: and yet, with this 394teeming consciousness, the secret of their regeneration is not half known, even by themselves; they
cannot comprehend it, because they are comprehended by it, as a thing that is greater than they;
and in it they have their being; and nevertheless,
as, on the one side, they are baffled by the greatness of the gift, so, on the other, are they straitened by the littleness
of their own finite capacities.
They feel themselves beset by earthly tempers, and
narrow thoughts, and shadows which fall inwardly
upon their hearts, and to their own eyes they seem
to be of a dim and earthly nature; they know of
themselves far more evil than good; the visible
and prominent points of their own character are
the darker lines, and the gloomier spots, which lie
upon the surface; in their own sight they have
no brightness, or, at the best, a pale sickly light,
often overcast; and they ask, “Can this be the
gift of righteousness? Can this swerving will, and
faint striving, and ready yielding, and often slumbering, and all this throng of hasty tempers, and
high thoughts, and unchastened imaginations, can all this dwell in the soul of
the righteous? Am I not passing a cheat upon myself, counting myself to be what
I am not?” And how must all this perplexity be multiplied when a righteous man
falls, be it never so little, from his obedience; when to the abiding sense of
inward evil is added the consciousness 395of fresh trangressions! What a mystery
is the life of David, the man after God’s own heart! how clouded and obscured,
and that not by false tongues, but by his own evil deeds!

Now, from all this we may see what is the hiddenness of our
spiritual life—how little it is perceived and understood by others—how imperfectly
it is apprehended even by ourselves—how it may
be for a time, as it were, altogether hidden from
our own eyes; and yet we feel within us some
thing which prophesies of our lot in God’s kingdom, and foretels the perfection of our being here
after; we feel something which pledges to us that
we shall not fall back again to the dominion of
unrighteousness; something which assures us that
we shall not be for ever bounded by the limits of
imperfection: we feel yearnings, and aspirations,
and breathing hopes, and conscious energies, which
reach after a larger sphere of being. And so it
shall be; for “the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their Father.”

We learn, then, in the next place, that this gift
of righteousness, which now lies hid in us, shall
hereafter be unfolded in its perfection in the kingdom of God: that is to say, when all things are
fulfilled, and the end is come, and the righteous
shall have passed through all the changes which
lie between the decay of our mortal bodies and our 396perfect renewal in the image of God; that is, at
the resurrection, when the whole man, in body,
soul, and spirit, shall be raised from the dead, “then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun.”
By “the kingdom of their Father,” therefore, is
meant the kingdom of the resurrection. Then
shall all that here lay hid in them be unfolded;
all shall be perfect, and enlarged to an ineffable
perfection. The very body shall become a vessel
of glory, being made like to the glorious body of
the second Adam; of whom, even in the days of
His flesh, we read, in His one only season of transient brightness, that “His raiment was white and
glistering,” “white as the light,” “exceeding white
as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them;” “and His face did shine as the sun:” so with our
flesh; “it is sown in weakness, it is raised in
power; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in
glory.” The body in which we have groaned “being burdened,” in which we have often fainted
and fallen back from “the law of the Spirit of life,”
in which we have been bowed down to earth with
blindness, and deafness, and deadness of powers
and sense,—even that same earthly frame shall be
full of life, and penetrated with the light of heaven.
There shall be in it no more any law warring
against the law of the Spirit; no division of the
man against himself; no strife in the being of the 397righteous: but the glorious body shall be the glad
minister of a holy will, and quickened by the pervading unity of the glorified spirit. And we know
that “they which shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the
dead,” cannot “die any more; for they are equal
to the angels, and are the children of God, being
the children of the resurrection.”133133 St. Luke xx. 35, 36. Nay, more;
we shall bear the likeness of the Son of God, of
whom we read, when He appeared to St. John,
that “His countenance was as the sun shineth in
his strength.”134134Rev. i. 16.

And yet the glory of the body would seem to
be chiefly but the manifestation of the glory of the
spirit. Then shall our regeneration be fulfilled: “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as
He is.” What this mysterious likeness may mean,
it is not for us too curiously to inquire. Certainly,
we know that every saint while on earth has had
impressed upon him by the hand of God his own
definite character; and yet all have been likened
to their Lord. All their several features of distinctness were comprehended in the perfect mind
of Christ. They were all conformed to Him; they
were all knit in unity together, by their universal
likeness to one common pattern; and so shall they
doubtless be hereafter, when the faint beginnings 398of perfection shall be unfolded in the fulness of
God’s kingdom. All the bonds and fetters of imperfection, all the heavy burden of earth and sinfulness, and all that checked
or thwarted the energies of their regenerate spirit,—shall be abolished;
and all that was in them of heaven and of God—all
holy affections, and pure thoughts, and righteous
intentions,—shall break forth into the perfection
of glory. All that Noah, Daniel, and Job, or
David, and Paul, and John, sought and strove to
be, by self-chastisement, and prayer, and righteousness of life, such they shall be at “the manifestation of the sons of God.”
We see now in those
around us, that each one has some characteristic
feature: in the mind of one we see a deep wisdom;
of another, a saintly meekness; of another, an angelic contemplation; of another, a burning charity;—each one being a law,
a pattern to himself. We
see, too, that this characteristic feature is ever
corning out into a fuller shape, drawing towards
its own perfect idea. So may we believe that, in
the kingdom of the resurrection, all the gifts of
God, all graces of the heart, and all endowments
of the sanctified reason, shall then be made perfect: without doubt all that constitutes the mysterious individuality of each
several man; all the
inscrutable features by which his spiritual being is
distinguished, without being opposed to, or divided 399from, the spirits of other men, shall be perpetuated
hereafter; and then shall all differences be harmonised in the perfection of bliss, as all hues are
blended in the unity of light. Sacraments, and prophecies, and signs, and all economies of grace, and
shadows of truth, shall all have passed away; and
this busy world, and all the works of it, shall be
burned up; and all worldly sciences shall be abolished, and all false theories of truth, and all false
hood which is interwoven with the truth, and all
vain and unprofitable learning, shall be no more.
And yet must we not believe, that as all that we
have here received of grace, so also all that we
have received of truth, shall be perfected and made
eternal? All the mysteries of the Divine Mind,
of which we have here partaken, shall surely still
abide in the illuminated spirit. In the many orders
and ranks of the blessed there shall be an ascent
and scale of being. All the powers and endowments of the individual mind, and of all its contemplative energies, and all the
characters and forms
which truth has impressed upon the sons of wisdom
in this life, shall doubtless then be carried onward
to the fulness of knowledge; all shall be full of
light, and yet all shall not be of an equal measure;
all shall be admitted to the beatific vision, but some
shall behold with a more piercing gaze; as it is
here, so shall it be there. Manifold and inexhaustible 400variety is
one of the tokens of the Divine Mind upon His visible works. It may be, that
were all alike, it would be as the dull sound of one change less tone, without
fall or harmony. As height, and breadth, and depth, and order, and degrees, and
multitude, and unity, are laws of God’s kingdom, so also is harmony, which is
the unity of things various and manifold; and so, when “the righteous shine
forth as the sun,” all the individual perfection which has lain hid in the
saints shall issue forth and blend into the eternal light. On the twelve gates
of the heavenly Jerusalem are “the names of the twelve tribes of the children of
Israel;”135135Rev. xxi. 14, 16; ii. 17. on the
twelve foundations “the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb;” the hundred and forty and four
thousand were sealed each one in the name of his
tribe; to him that overcometh shall be given “a
white stone, and in the stone a new name written,
which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
Each one several and distinct, even as here, so
shall he be there; each one shining forth in his
own blessedness; and yet the song of the redeemed,
the everlasting chant of “all nations, and kindred,
and people, and tongues,” is but one; their voices
without number, yet but one accordant hymn; so
shall all perfection, and all righteousness, and all
bliss, and all thanksgiving, be perfect in every saint, 401and united in one heavenly glory, which shall encompass the righteous.

O wonderful and blessed thought, that the gift
which is in us shall one day have the mastery
over all obstructions; that all sins, and faults, and
weaknesses, and ignorance, and all decay and wandering, and all the clouds which rest upon mortality, and all the hinderances
of the world and of
the flesh, shall be taken away; and that we shall
be ripened into a mysterious perfection of the spiritual being! Blessed thought, and full of freshness and calm to the weary
and heavy-laden, one
day all their oppressions shall be rolled back from
them, and they shall “shine forth as the sun!”
Let us beware how we judge one another. Who
knows what may lie hid in the man whom we
slight and cast out as of no esteem? who can say
how he may outshine his fellows in the kingdom
of the resurrection? “We fools accounted his life
madness, and his end to be without honour: how
is he numbered with the children of God, and his
lot is among the saints! Therefore have we erred
from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness hath not shined unto us, and the sun of righteousness rose not upon
us.”136136Wisdom v. 4-6. Wonderful and over
whelming, to behold at that day the resurrection
of the righteous, each one shining forth in his own 402distinguishable splendour! “Then shall we know
even as also we are known;” and there shall be
strange overrulings of our blind judgments. “Many
that are first shall be last, and the last shall be
first.” The poor man thou despisedst an hour ago
shall sit higher than thou at the marriage-supper
of the Lamb. And the simple and unlearned, and
the lowly and slow of speech, whom the learned,
and eloquent, and lofty, and prosperous, have contemned as mean and foolish, shall be arrayed in
exceeding brightness,, before which they shall be
dim and naked. Let us also beware how we give
much care or thought to any thing but to the
perfecting of our hidden life. What else is worth
living for? What else shall endure at Christ’s coming? Most awful and searching day, when
“the light of the moon shall be as the light of the
sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days!” Let us therefore live
ever waiting for that hour. What matter though
we be poor, slighted, slandered, forgotten, moving
in the shadows of the world,, so that we attain unto
a glorious resurrection? O most glad hour, when
it shall dawn towards the first day of the everlasting week; when there shall be a making ready in
the heaven above and in the earth beneath; when
legions of angels shall gather around the Sun of
righteousness, and all orders and hosts of heaven 403shall know that the time for “the manifestation of
the sons of God” is come! What joy shall there
be at that hour in the world unseen! and what a
thrill, as of a penetrating light, shall run through
the dust where the saints are sleeping! When was
there ever such a day-spring since the time when “God said, Let there be light, and there was light?”
He shall come, and all His shining ones; ten
thousand times ten thousand, whose countenances
are “like lightning,” and their “raiment white as
snow;” all the heavenly court,—angels, archangels,
cherubim and seraphim,—clad in unimaginable
splendours; and the righteous shall arise from the
grave, and the earth shall be lightened with their
glory; they shall stretch forth their hands to meet
Him, and bow themselves before the brightness of
His coming. O blessed hour, after all the sorrows,
and wrongs, and falsehoods, and darkness, and
burdens of life, to see Him face to face; to be
made sinless; to shine with an exceeding strength;
to be as the light, in which there “is no darkness
at all!” Be this our hope, our chiefest toil, our
almost only prayer.

THE END.

404

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